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Lewisham East, Labour Hold

Congratulations Janet

How good was the victory? The turnout was low, 33.3%, as one might expect for a by-election held one month after Borough Mayor and Council elections.

Here’s how the vote share works over the last three elections. The Labour vote remains above 50% i.e. we beat all the rest put together. The chart below/overleaf shows the vote share in the last three elections …

The Liberal Democrats leapfrog the Tories from 3rd with a lost deposit to 2nd, seemingly taking votes from both Labour and the Tories. (It wasn’t a good week for the Tories over Brexit in this strongly remain constituency.) We assume that Brexit was the reason for a LibDem resurgence but there may have been a reaction to Labour’s absolute victory on the Council where they hold every seat.

I think that both national and Lewisham politics is getting more tribal; there’s less conversations about politics & policy on the doorstep and this is shown by the fact everyone except Labour, LibDems and Tories lost their deposits.

Another remarkable trend is the collapse of UKIP from 3rd in 2015 to irrelevant in 2018, although they beat “For Britain” yeterday.

One thought on “Lewisham East, Labour Hold”

We are unsure of the proportion of Black, Asian and Minority residents in Lewisham and Lewisham East, but it’s very close to 50%, maybe above, maybe below but it’s possible that a majority of the voters are of BAME ethnicity.

Another thing is that neither the victims of racism nor their neighbours vote for racist parties.